In mid-2018 a mysterious photo arrived on my phone with a ping. A good friend had sent a photo of me I’d never seen before, but I knew the time and the place. I was curious about how he’d gotten a photo of my shivery self at the New Year’s Day Swim at Culdaff Beach in Inishowen, Co. Donegal in 2012.
“Where’d you get that?”
“The sign.”
“What sign?”
“The sign at the beach.”
“I don’t…”
“You are on the sign about the swim at Culdaff beach.”
Now to give a little context this swim occurs every year on New Year’s Day in Culdaff, Co. Donegal and it is the best day’s craic you can have for the cost of a) getting there and b) waiting patiently for your testicles to re-descend after emerging from the January Atlantic.
I first went to the swim in the early 90s and while my friends took the screaming plunge I remained bone dry because I couldn’t swim and was terrified of water (I got pushed over in the sea by an English cousin when I was about 5 and I staggered out and never got back in again).
After this New Year’s Day swim in Culdaff an impressive amount of hot social lubricant was served to the swimmers to reanimate their petrified blood and save their teeth from chattering to pieces. I was handed a hot steaming glass which I politely refused-
“Get it intae ye tee fuck”
was the reply I found myself incapable of arguing with. I found myself incapable of arguing several more times and we left the beach in very high spirits and headed to McGrorys for the soup and sandwiches laid on for the swimmers. I was fed and watered with no questions asked. I should repeat that I did not dip a toe; no extremity was in any danger of moisture apart from the elbow that found the bar. The rest of the day was sinking pints and watching live music (thanks Dominic!).
As I endured the singing hangover of the second of January that year I vowed I would learn to swim and come back to scream and shrink with the best of them on New Year’s Day in some future year. I felt I had a debt, I owed a frozen swim to the good people of Culdaff who’d absolutely plied me with… sandwiches that day.
In my 30s I got swimming lessons for Christmas and eventually perfected a sort of sustained non-drowning that the instructors said was “good enough” and that I “shouldn’t come back”. Equipped with an eased fear of water and ability to float at least, I took the dip on New Year’s Day 2012. (My then-young son does quite a bit of invoking the name of the lord in this, adjust your speakers accordingly.)
Unfortunately I didn’t get to swim with any of my mates that day but at least I’d dipped my toes and retrospectively achieved some worthiness for all that earlier generosity. One swim on that one day. Lookit local people had been doing that swim for decades but I’d got my token soak.
Then 6 years later the guy who’d done one flipping swim ended up the focal point of an information poster erected on Culdaff beach all about the New Year’s Day swim. This was justified imposter syndrome: I thought I’d be run off the beach next time I was up there by the family of a distinguished local matriarch who’d been swimming since The Emergency and who obviously deserved this commemoration more than this blow-in! No such objections came and there I was, the face of the Culdaff Beach New Year’s Day Swim.
Of course I’ve absolutely milked The Face of Culdaff Beach with my mates for years and when I’m visiting Culdaff I’ll stand beside the sign and point myself out to new arrivals who get back in their cars and park further up the car park.
WAW! It Gets Weirder.
In 2024 my wee sis Louise had a couple of visitors down in Dublin who had done the Wild Atlantic Way and had collected stamps in their Wild Atlantic Way Passport, a marketing wheeze dreamed up by An Post and Fáilte Ireland that seemed to have caught on with travellers. You take this passport book and pop into locations along the route of the Wild Atlantic Way (let’s just go with WAW if it comes up again, it’s hard enough to say and it’s giving me wrist strain typing it out). One of the locations you got your book stamped was Culdaff post office. My sister was thumbing through her friends’ WAW (phew!) passport and saw a familiar figure:
Oh look it’s me! I’m the WAW passport stamp for Culdaff Beach! Based on the photo of me emerging from my single solitary swim in 2012! I’m now the avatar of a cultural phenomenon I blundered into by accident!
So potentially 100s of visitors to Donegal have a wee passport stamp of me from Culdaff Post Office. I’ve always meant to call in to get a stamp of myself but time’s always been against me and it’s rare enough I get up. The stamp’s just the sort of thing that could easily get lost so who knows if I’d get anything but weird looks if I called in and asked for a stamp of myself. I don’t even know if the passport is available any more; but for a few years there I was a booklet-famous bald guy, an inky collector’s item, a hardcopy meme, I was…
The Face of Culdaff Beach.
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I’m Allan Cavanagh and I have been professionally producing caricatures and cartoon art for over 20 years.
The curious case of the stolen avatar, and how sometimes the internet has your back.
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